


Dust to Dust

by Inchoatl



Category: Kidd Commander (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, rating for profanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26060254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inchoatl/pseuds/Inchoatl
Summary: Musings on Commanders. Likely inaccurate. There's a lot of people out there, and they've each got their own opinion on the way the world turns.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	Dust to Dust

They say every Commander you're ever gonna meet's sold their soul for power. They say that Commanders're blasphemers, heretics who've stolen godhood and turned it to their own selfish ends. They say there ain't no good Commanders. Never was, never will be. You see a Commander? You pray. You can't outtalk a Commander. You can't outrun a Commander. You can't fight a Commander. You can't _kill_ a Commander.

No, you see a Commander? You pray some god turns an eye round and smites the pretender before it's too late.

They say a lot of things about Commanders. Surprise, surprise, they're all wrong, but there's few people that'll actually bother to care. Fact of the matter is that the ins and outs of Commanders means very little to corpses, and even less to the loved ones those corpses leave behind. And every Commander leaves corpses behind them.

Every. Single. One.

Commanders don't have any other choice, really. They don't to bow when the rules of civilization say they oughta, and they'll fight the entropy of the open Sprawl to their last breath. Wherever Commanders go, they're gonna find enemies. Be it person, place, or thing, wherever they go a Commander's gonna find something that tells them 'This is the way of things; submit or die.' And every Commander that's worth the name will stare right back and say 'You first.' 

Sounds tempting, don't it? Enough power to flip the bird to everything that's ever ground you down beneath it's boot. With all that power up for grabs, you'd think more people would go for it, especially since every mother's son runs their mouth about how Commanders've sold their souls like it's something so easy as buying a carton of milk at the store. Please sir, I'd like one (1) set of powers beyond mortal ken with which to murder our sovereign lords. I can pay you one (1) human soul. Utter bullshit. People sell their souls for far less every day. If it were that easy we'd have a lot more wannabe Commanders roaming around, and the world would have a lot more craters. If there was a world left to get holes punched in it.

You ever tried to breath? Manually, I mean. Every breath a deliberate action, nothing on automatic like your body usually runs. It's a bit like that, but much, much more. It's like that, but everything. There's a bunch that our bodies do for us that we ain't properly appreciative for. We don't forget to breath when we gotta go to sleep. Our hearts keep on pumping our blood through our veins even if we get distracted by something shiny and forget about all sorts of things that _should_ be taking priority. We don't have to carefully take apart everything we eat and convert into the energy to get up in the morning. Our bodies weave apples into bones, spin new flesh from a plate of fries and we don't pay it the slightest bit of mind.

Commanders though, they don't got that. What they've got is a bunch of bits and bobs that they've gotta keep together by sheer force of will. They gotta pump their own blood, build their own bones, remember to slap on a new layer of skin when the old one gets too worn. The way I heard it, you get used to it eventually. It's habit, like pouring yourself the same cup of coffee you've poured yourself every day for the last ten years. Don't even have to think about it. Back where they started, except this time they've got a bunch of fancy powers and a habit of zoning out because it's so much harder to ignore something going wrong with your body when you're every ground level worker moving boxes from point A to point B. Micromanaging's a bitch when you're commanding your entire body.

That's why they're called Commanders, you know. They Command. They make an order and the world obeys. I know it sounds easy, and hell it might even be at the start. But you ever think what happens if they fuck up? If they don't keep every inch of their domain under their thumb? What happens when an army starts thinking maybe their general doesn't have what it takes? What happens when a lord issuess an order and their subjects say 'No'? 

Commanders don't leave corpses. Just a hole in the world and the memory of something that used to be a person.

Commander told me once upon a time, it's all stardust, really. It's where everything came from, and it's where everything's going eventually. All well and good for someone that speaks the light cosmic, but the rest of us regular Joes ain't operating on that sort of scale. They're up there looking at the map of creation and we're down here in Pinprick Nowheresville, bottom leftish of the map and fifty clicks southwest of the nearest tourist trap that's barely pulled enough clout to be worth putting ink to paper. If something happens down here, well for them it's just a little change on the map. Bumfuck mountain village now reads ex-bumfuck mountain village. Stardust is still stardust, just a little more to the left. Sand shifting on the beach. But for us, that's our entire world that's gone.

That's the thing about Commanders. After a while they forget what it's like to see the world from the eyes of the little people. So, you mark my words. You see a Commander? You keep your head down and pray they just pass on by. They ain't evil, most of 'em leastaways, but that don't matter none. They're dangerous. We're all gonna turn back into stardust eventually, but Commanders are headed that way faster'n most, and they'll take you with 'em if you're fool enough to stick around.

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily disjointed, and the voice kinda changed a couple times as I wrote it. Tried to standardize it, then gave up and posted it, because otherwise the only thing I'd be posting it to is the trash. *Internal chant* Done is better than perfect, done is better than perfect, done-


End file.
